1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of water-treatment systems, and more particularly to systems for converting reclaimed water into treated water useful for watering parkways, highway borders, crop irrigation, and other uses.
In a different aspect of the invention, the present invention relates to the field of fluid mixing systems, and more particularly systems for converting water-based fluid components into fluid products, such as paints, fluid varnishes and other coatings, medicaments, beverages etc., wherein said water based fluid products have certain pre-established qualities, such as color, viscosity, water content, flavor, salinity etc.
2. Description of Related Art
Water conservation, as well as anti-pollution laws and regulations are in effect in many parts of the United States and in many countries outside the United States. Often these requirements are addressed together with the use of treated, but non-potable, reclaimed, typically referred to as "treated water". Typical of such uses are the watering of golf courses, parks and highway borders and median strips, and the irrigation of some types of crops.
As above mentioned, the reclaimed water, which may comprise sanitized water from sewage plants and industrial processes, or certain types of run-offs, requires a certain amount of treatment or additional treatment in order to bring the reclaimed water up to acceptable treated water standards. This requirement typically involves two problems: the pre-treated effluent may vary from time-to-time, and/or in location-to-location, in such parameters as pH, the amount of total dissolved solids (TDS), and the flow rate, and the treated water requirements as to the foregoing may be different in different locations and may even vary in a given locality according to the intended use.
Because of the variables involved with both the innate quality of the reclaimed water and the requirements for the treated water, the treatment of a flow of reclaimed water with just the minimal amount of clean treatment water to provide a treated water meeting the pre-established quality levels has been difficult if not impossible to provide in an economical manner.
The present inventor has described a system for treating reclaimed water to provide treated water and a method of using said system to provide treated water from reclaimed water. (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,641,410 to Peltzer which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.) It has been found to be possible to convert many existing waste water treating systems into systems which can be utilized to practice the method of U.S. Pat. No. 5,641,410 and other similar methods of converting reclaimed water into potable water.
It is also desirable to construct new waste water treating systems to practice the method of U.S. Pat. No. 5,641,410 and other similar methods of converting reclaimed water into potable water.
In addition, the present inventor has discovered new and useful ways of converting water-based fluid components of a fluid product into a fluid product exhibiting certain desired pre-established qualities or characteristics.
It is therefore, a principal objective of the present invention to provide a method of constructing an effective and efficient system for converting fluid components into a final fluid product having a pre-defined or pre-established quality or characteristic by mixing an amount of a first fluid component with a second fluid component.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a method of mixing fluid components to obtain a water-based fluid product, wherein at least one of said fluid components is a water-based fluid component and wherein the fluid product exhibits particular, desirable, pre-established characteristics or qualities.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a fluid mixing system having multiple mixing stages wherein the qualities of the combined waters or other fluids may be monitored along intermediate mixing stages.
Other objects and advantages of the instant invention will be apparent from a careful reading of the specification below.